Chemotherapy Effects on Different Cancer Patients
Chemotherapy is any treatment that utilizes the use of chemicals to stop cancer cells from continuing to flourish. This type of treatment is used on 50% of all people diagnosed with cancer. It can eliminate cancer cells that have been metastasized as well. Chemotherapy has saved millions of peoples lives, but it doesn’t save every cancer patient.
Chemotherapy works wonders for some people and not at all for others. The cause of this was not known until recently when the Center for Environmental Health Sciences (CEHS) and Departments of Biological Engineering and Biology from MIT discovered a group of 48 genes. Several of these 48 genes have been linked to cancer, but what they all have in common is that they can all show how susceptible a patient is to MNNG, which is a DNA-damaging agent present in chemotherapeutic agents.
MNNG induces unstoppable DNA damage by creating lesions in the DNA, thereby killing the cells. Everyone’s DNA reacts to MNNG by attempting to repair itself, however some people’s DNA reacts more strongly while others’ reaction can be more passive. Everyone’s DNA is so different that two seemingly equally healthy individuals were tested by MIT researchers and it was found that they could have completely different responses to the same chemotherapy treatment.
The MIT team continued with this research by measuring the expression of each of the 48 genes in every cell line. They measured the sensitivity of each gene to MNNG several times and found they were 94% accutrate in their results. They followed by measuring responses to other common chemotherapeutic toxic agents that are typically used to treat cancer patients. They have discovered how and why different patients react differently to the same chemotherapy treatments. This means that chemotherapy may not be the right cancer treatment for every patient, it depends on their genetic reactions to MNNG and other toxic agents.
